Suspects arrested in torching of store whose Arab owner donated bikes to Jews

Seven suspects have been indicted for allegedly carrying out an arson attack on a bicycle store in the Arab Israeli town of Taibe in October, the Israel Police says in a joint statement with the Shin Bet security service.

In the early hours of the morning on October 14, the bicycle store owned by Alaa Amara was looted and torched after he donated some 50 bicycles to children evacuated from Gaza border communities in the wake of the deadly Hamas onslaught on October 7.

The police investigation into the attack determined it to have been “carried out on an ideological-nationalistic basis,” the statement says, adding that in the case of one of the suspects, the arson is being treated as “an act of terrorism.”

The charges brought against the suspects involved in the affair include breaking and entering; theft; possessing, carrying and firing a weapon; and desecrating a flag.

Speaking to The Times of Israel after the attack, Amara said he had noticed that the evacuated children had nothing to do in the early days of the war, and so he decided to give them bicycles, free of charge.

Composite image widely distributed on social media showing Alaa Amara distributing bicycles to evacuee children, on Thursday, October 12, 2023. (used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

“I did it to benefit the children. They don’t know about war,” he said at the time.

Just two days later, a group of people broke into the store at around 2 a.m., stealing and looting before setting the store on fire.

“They were armed and shot out the cameras. Some wore masks… the damage is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of shekels,” Amara’s wife told Walla after the attack.

While nobody was harmed during the incident, Amara later learned that the perpetrators had tried to lure him into the store in order to attack him. “They wanted to lynch me,” he said.

— with Gavriel Fiske